Colour management might be a problem - I think the VMWare graphics driver is pretty basic, so I'm not sure it would work with things like colour calibration devices.
Well, Asian is worse in that regard. Look at map, look at how many countries are on that continent. Political correctness run amok.
Being from the UK, I always have to do a mental translation in my head - Asian, in the US, seems to refer to what we would call Oriental - generally East Asia.
In the UK, Asian means India and Pakistan. A chinese person would never identify themselves here as Asian.
It doesn't terminate in the sense that you suggest - connection between Opera servers and mobile phone is always encrypted, on every webpage.
I hadn't heard of Opera mini before, but that's actually quite useful. I get free wi-fi at many public access points (UK, O2 - so places like Starbucks, McDs and some pubs) but it's always unencrypted. For non critical (i.e. not bank) sites, it'd be quite handy to have a proxy service to encrypt all my browsing. I'd use it just for that (although it's moot, because I've got a Palm Pre...)
Last I heard, most of those are planned to be included at some point, but they were contingent on getting gegl done and incorporated into GIMP. Since gegl's in now, presumably it won't be that long before those features start working their way into future releases. That said, I haven't really been following it recently, so I have no idea what the current status is.
It's quite a slow process, though. I got my first DSLR in early 2006 and it's about then that I gave up on Linux and the Gimp for photo editing because of the lack of those features, which still aren't there. Prior to that I'd been using film and only using the PC for quick scans for the web, and for that the Gimp was fine for minor edits, resizing and cropping (although sharpening was a bit hit and miss due to the lack of a decent preview).
LAB has some benefits regardless of the final output destination - some photographers swear by sharpening in one of the layers only for better sharpening results.
CYMK is probably only useful for pro printing needs.
And colour management, but the OS has to support it as well, which means Mac or Windows at the moment.
I also used to find the Gimp to be very slow in applying filters (I'm thinking specifically of things like unsharp mask) - I think because it processes the whole image. Photoshop previews the filter on the area displayed (assuming you're at 100% and seeing a fraction of the whole image), letting you assess the effect and make small adjustments to the parameters until it looks right. Then you can apply to the whole image and that's when it takes the time.
I may be out of date on this, as I went to Photoshop ages ago because the Gimp didn't cut it for serious photographic post processing.
Trouble is, the current price/performance cut off is such that it costs very little, if any, extra to have a device that does more - a full function netbook, rather than a lightweight browser type of device. Unless the cut down option offers seriously better battery life, is much lighter and has a better screen than a good netbook, I don't see the market - if you just might need a more capable device, you're better off with one that does both rather than get a cut down device and also have to own the full featured one for the rest of the time.
Something like the Samsung NC10 has as much power as the crappy four year old laptop I have to use at work - 1.6GHz, upgrade it to 2GB, 160GB HD - and I can do pretty much everthing I'd ever want to do on a laptop. Solid state small scale devices offer no major advantages.
I've been thinking about this tablet format, and I think it's got a few limitations.
For a start, you've got to hold it up or prop it against something while you use it. So, how's this for an idea... give it a hinged lid that can be used to protect the screen and as a stand when it's open. Better yet - if you've got the hinged bit at the front, why not put a physical keyboard in there to save screen space and for easier typing.
Wonder if anyone's come up with any products like that?
Raw conversion tool for Linux is good news, but the thing that really seems to be lacking is colour management. I'm a serious hobby photographer (exhibited and published), and I use Photoshop on Windows. Heresy on here? Well, it does colour management properly and supports profiling hardware. The Gimp is a great piece of software, and probably beats Photoshop Elements, but I need the pro features of Photoshop (mainly back to colour profiles again).
I'm a couple of years out of date on the state of the art under Linux, so await correction if things have changed recently.
And before anyone suggests a Mac would be a better option, I just can't justify the price premium.
Incidentally, since I returned to Windows out of need, for the photography, I've found everything else I need - I use WAMP for my web development, I've got Perl, there's cygwin if I really need it; at this point, the actual OS is pretty much irrelevant as long as I can get the userspace tools I need.
In many cases, the real risk of someone accessing data is much less than the risk of losing encrypted data because you lose the means to decrypt it. I've seen users who've encrypted their own disks go to support when they forget the passphrase and insist that support decrypt it for them... er, no, sorry, you're screwed.
Or let's say you get a hard drive failure and lose data that isn't backed up (it happens, even if you think you're careful). With an unencrypted disk, depending on the failure, you have an outside chance of retrieving files because even a partial file might be usable. With an encrypted drive, you're screwed again. It's going to be all or nothing - at least at the file level, and possibly the entire drive.
Taking the balance of risk, performance and all the rest (sensitive data should only be stored centrally anyway), encrypting local drives seems like overkill.
The employees that quit first are not necessarily the ones you want to lose - they're the ones most capable of getting another job somewhere else. Who do you think you're left with?
The last install I did of Solaris 10 included Apache 2.0 (.58, IIRC), so there are still new installations going in with 2.0. Since Sun started shipping Apache with the OS, we tend to use it rather than create our own packages or use the Sun freeware versions - theoretically, Sun will support the OS supplied version (never needed support on it, so couldn't say).
I believe the cooltools versions use 2.2, but not sure if the latest 10 releases include it as standard.
Our production estate includes everything from 1.3 up.
The UK law prohibits indecent images. Nudity is neither necessary nor sufficient to indicate indecency under UK law.
Simple snaps on a nudist beach, medical photographs, photos gathered for evidence in court, snaps in the bath or on a rug - all perfectly legal. A fully clothed but sexually suggestive photograph of a child may be illegal - nudity is not the defining criteria.
There is no way these machines would fall foul of the UK law, so it's a complete non-story.
The main cause of dissatisfaction for me is the regulation, particularly ITIL.
When I started, you could actually fix things when users reported problems. Simple.
Now it seems like I have to ask permission to do my job. Every little thing requires approval by a change board and explanation to non-technical managers who can't assess the risk properly because they have no idea of what I'm proposing to do.
And it's to protect the techies, they tell us! Take a system down and cause chaos and no problem - as long as the paperwork was approved you're covered, no comebacks. Well, I'm sorry, but if I can't be trusted to do simple maintenance work without taking the system down or breaking anything, I don't deserve to be in the job.
It seems like the regulation is because more and more of the admins are relatively unskilled and therefore need to be closely monitored. Deeply frustrating to those of us who enjoy the technical problem solving but hate the paperwork and other corporate nonsense.
If you read my post, you will note that I did not rule out diet as a risk factor for gout; just that it is not the major factor. In fact, the list you provide is in the right order; genetics come first, *way* ahead of alcohol and food as causal factors.
Put it like this, if you are not genetically predisposed to gout you almost certainly won't get it from your diet - the other risk factors are only risk factors for those already at risk from their genes. If you are genetically predisposed, a very careful diet *might* *just* stop you from developing acute symptoms.
One of the big problems with diets like Atkins is that eating too much protein can come with a whole other set of problems.
One of them is Gout.
Actually gout is almost entirely unrelated to diet, despite the common perception. It's caused by uric acid crystallising in the joints, and only a small proportion of the body's uric acid comes from food.
Gout is primarily genetic; if your body handles the acid, you'll be fine, if it doesn't you'll get gout almost entirely independently of diet. I accept that huge quantities of trigger foods may increase the likelihood of an attack, but not all proteins are triggers. The most foods likely to cause problems are seafood and animal organs (liver, kidney etc). However, whatever you eat, you will only develop gout if you are genetically predisposed to do so
I need full support for ICC profiles and colour managed workflow, and I need 16bit editing. Sorry, the Gimp doesn't cut it for higher end work.
Unfortunately for Linux, to get full colour management you need Photoshop AND support for hardware calibration tools (those things that you stick to your monitor).
The BBC are very particular about avoiding advertisements, even unintended product placement (in soaps like Eastenders, they come up with fictional beers to sell in the pub and so on). If product placement became the norm, I wonder if they would be forced to stop showing American imports?
That raises a very good point as far as support is concerned. I find it' s much easier to support someone using a command line or terminal app - you just tell them what to type and when to press enter, and they can just read the response.
With a browser app, you're constantly having to describe the screen:
"OK, now do you see a little button that looks like a magnifying glass"
"Yes, do I press that?"
"No, press the one next to it that I can't describe because I have no idea what flavour of crack our designers were smoking when they decided to make it the icon for update"... and so on.
Our company policy recently changed from smart casual to business suits. Sorry, but to me a business suit is a uniform. McDonalds servers wear uniforms. School children wear uniforms. Why should I be treated like a child?
I resent the inference that by wearing a piece of cloth tied in a knot around my neck I will somehow be more professional and do a better job; hell, I can post to Slashdot while still wearing a tie - I'm doing it right now.
I can see no logical reason for business dress, and as a geek that lack of logic really pisses me off.
Our new CEO came to our office to introduce himself and actually spent ten minutes lecturing us on the importance of business dress. In one office, we apparently have staff tasked with reporting on colleagues with poor dress standards. I know it's completely screwed, and I should leave, but the pays OK and my actual job is quite interesting, so I put up with the bullshit.
I'd just like to add to this that the government seems hell bent on making driving expensive, but this is not out of any concern for the environment or as a backdoor ban on driving; they want us driving and paying through the nose for it.
Otherwise how do you explain new housing estates being built with no public transport links and no local shops - only a Tesco superstore five or ten miles away? Or how do you explain business parks built with no public transport access?
My company relocated from a town centre office block which was five minutes walk from a train station and had a bus stop right outside. We had been there for years and many employees had relocated to within walking distance. Our new office is on a business park, about 15 miles away, so walking is out of the question. The nearest train station is about a 40 minute walk away. Bus links are non existant. Previously I could walk to work in about half an hour. It now takes me the same to drive, but public transport would take almost three times as long (20 min walk to station, 20 minutes on train, 40 minutes to walk to office). Rather than walk five minutes to a sandwich shop at lunchtime, the nearest supermarket is a five mile round trip.
One other kicker; it costs more to sit on a cattle truck of a train than to sit in the comfort of my car.
The reason for our move? It was much cheaper. Not for the building, but for the taxes. In other words, the company got a massive tax break to relocate to a location that forced the employees to commute by car. Perhaps you could explain to me how the free market was involved in that?
I guess I still deserve everything I get though, for not being willing to take a massive pay cut to stay in the old town or spend tens of thousands to relocate (and incidentally, there is next to no housing near the new business park anyway).
Slashdot Mirror
Colour management might be a problem - I think the VMWare graphics driver is pretty basic, so I'm not sure it would work with things like colour calibration devices.
Well, Asian is worse in that regard. Look at map, look at how many countries are on that continent. Political correctness run amok.
Being from the UK, I always have to do a mental translation in my head - Asian, in the US, seems to refer to what we would call Oriental - generally East Asia.
In the UK, Asian means India and Pakistan. A chinese person would never identify themselves here as Asian.
It doesn't terminate in the sense that you suggest - connection between Opera servers and mobile phone is always encrypted, on every webpage.
I hadn't heard of Opera mini before, but that's actually quite useful. I get free wi-fi at many public access points (UK, O2 - so places like Starbucks, McDs and some pubs) but it's always unencrypted. For non critical (i.e. not bank) sites, it'd be quite handy to have a proxy service to encrypt all my browsing. I'd use it just for that (although it's moot, because I've got a Palm Pre...)
Last I heard, most of those are planned to be included at some point, but they were contingent on getting gegl done and incorporated into GIMP. Since gegl's in now, presumably it won't be that long before those features start working their way into future releases. That said, I haven't really been following it recently, so I have no idea what the current status is.
It's quite a slow process, though. I got my first DSLR in early 2006 and it's about then that I gave up on Linux and the Gimp for photo editing because of the lack of those features, which still aren't there. Prior to that I'd been using film and only using the PC for quick scans for the web, and for that the Gimp was fine for minor edits, resizing and cropping (although sharpening was a bit hit and miss due to the lack of a decent preview).
LAB has some benefits regardless of the final output destination - some photographers swear by sharpening in one of the layers only for better sharpening results.
CYMK is probably only useful for pro printing needs.
And colour management, but the OS has to support it as well, which means Mac or Windows at the moment.
I also used to find the Gimp to be very slow in applying filters (I'm thinking specifically of things like unsharp mask) - I think because it processes the whole image. Photoshop previews the filter on the area displayed (assuming you're at 100% and seeing a fraction of the whole image), letting you assess the effect and make small adjustments to the parameters until it looks right. Then you can apply to the whole image and that's when it takes the time.
I may be out of date on this, as I went to Photoshop ages ago because the Gimp didn't cut it for serious photographic post processing.
That'll be the iPad then...
Trouble is, the current price/performance cut off is such that it costs very little, if any, extra to have a device that does more - a full function netbook, rather than a lightweight browser type of device. Unless the cut down option offers seriously better battery life, is much lighter and has a better screen than a good netbook, I don't see the market - if you just might need a more capable device, you're better off with one that does both rather than get a cut down device and also have to own the full featured one for the rest of the time.
Something like the Samsung NC10 has as much power as the crappy four year old laptop I have to use at work - 1.6GHz, upgrade it to 2GB, 160GB HD - and I can do pretty much everthing I'd ever want to do on a laptop. Solid state small scale devices offer no major advantages.
I've been thinking about this tablet format, and I think it's got a few limitations.
For a start, you've got to hold it up or prop it against something while you use it. So, how's this for an idea... give it a hinged lid that can be used to protect the screen and as a stand when it's open. Better yet - if you've got the hinged bit at the front, why not put a physical keyboard in there to save screen space and for easier typing.
Wonder if anyone's come up with any products like that?
Raw conversion tool for Linux is good news, but the thing that really seems to be lacking is colour management. I'm a serious hobby photographer (exhibited and published), and I use Photoshop on Windows. Heresy on here? Well, it does colour management properly and supports profiling hardware. The Gimp is a great piece of software, and probably beats Photoshop Elements, but I need the pro features of Photoshop (mainly back to colour profiles again).
I'm a couple of years out of date on the state of the art under Linux, so await correction if things have changed recently.
And before anyone suggests a Mac would be a better option, I just can't justify the price premium.
Incidentally, since I returned to Windows out of need, for the photography, I've found everything else I need - I use WAMP for my web development, I've got Perl, there's cygwin if I really need it; at this point, the actual OS is pretty much irrelevant as long as I can get the userspace tools I need.
In many cases, the real risk of someone accessing data is much less than the risk of losing encrypted data because you lose the means to decrypt it. I've seen users who've encrypted their own disks go to support when they forget the passphrase and insist that support decrypt it for them... er, no, sorry, you're screwed.
Or let's say you get a hard drive failure and lose data that isn't backed up (it happens, even if you think you're careful). With an unencrypted disk, depending on the failure, you have an outside chance of retrieving files because even a partial file might be usable. With an encrypted drive, you're screwed again. It's going to be all or nothing - at least at the file level, and possibly the entire drive.
Taking the balance of risk, performance and all the rest (sensitive data should only be stored centrally anyway), encrypting local drives seems like overkill.
The employees that quit first are not necessarily the ones you want to lose - they're the ones most capable of getting another job somewhere else. Who do you think you're left with?
The last install I did of Solaris 10 included Apache 2.0 (.58, IIRC), so there are still new installations going in with 2.0. Since Sun started shipping Apache with the OS, we tend to use it rather than create our own packages or use the Sun freeware versions - theoretically, Sun will support the OS supplied version (never needed support on it, so couldn't say).
I believe the cooltools versions use 2.2, but not sure if the latest 10 releases include it as standard.
Our production estate includes everything from 1.3 up.
The UK law prohibits indecent images. Nudity is neither necessary nor sufficient to indicate indecency under UK law.
Simple snaps on a nudist beach, medical photographs, photos gathered for evidence in court, snaps in the bath or on a rug - all perfectly legal. A fully clothed but sexually suggestive photograph of a child may be illegal - nudity is not the defining criteria.
There is no way these machines would fall foul of the UK law, so it's a complete non-story.
The main cause of dissatisfaction for me is the regulation, particularly ITIL.
When I started, you could actually fix things when users reported problems. Simple.
Now it seems like I have to ask permission to do my job. Every little thing requires approval by a change board and explanation to non-technical managers who can't assess the risk properly because they have no idea of what I'm proposing to do.
And it's to protect the techies, they tell us! Take a system down and cause chaos and no problem - as long as the paperwork was approved you're covered, no comebacks. Well, I'm sorry, but if I can't be trusted to do simple maintenance work without taking the system down or breaking anything, I don't deserve to be in the job.
It seems like the regulation is because more and more of the admins are relatively unskilled and therefore need to be closely monitored. Deeply frustrating to those of us who enjoy the technical problem solving but hate the paperwork and other corporate nonsense.
I know I'm late in replying to this but...
No, I'm not wrong.
If you read my post, you will note that I did not rule out diet as a risk factor for gout; just that it is not the major factor. In fact, the list you provide is in the right order; genetics come first, *way* ahead of alcohol and food as causal factors.
Put it like this, if you are not genetically predisposed to gout you almost certainly won't get it from your diet - the other risk factors are only risk factors for those already at risk from their genes. If you are genetically predisposed, a very careful diet *might* *just* stop you from developing acute symptoms.
All I want is Google Earth for desktop Linux.
(Oh, and Photoshop, but that's another story...)
Cold turkey is a fine idea if you're addicted to heroin or alcohol. Not quite sure how it would work with an addiction to food...
One of them is Gout.
Actually gout is almost entirely unrelated to diet, despite the common perception. It's caused by uric acid crystallising in the joints, and only a small proportion of the body's uric acid comes from food.
Gout is primarily genetic; if your body handles the acid, you'll be fine, if it doesn't you'll get gout almost entirely independently of diet. I accept that huge quantities of trigger foods may increase the likelihood of an attack, but not all proteins are triggers. The most foods likely to cause problems are seafood and animal organs (liver, kidney etc). However, whatever you eat, you will only develop gout if you are genetically predisposed to do so
And yes, I speak from first hand knowledge.
Professor Baron Cohen is also the cousin of Sascha Baron Cohen, AKA. Ali G.
I need full support for ICC profiles and colour managed workflow, and I need 16bit editing. Sorry, the Gimp doesn't cut it for higher end work.
Unfortunately for Linux, to get full colour management you need Photoshop AND support for hardware calibration tools (those things that you stick to your monitor).
The BBC are very particular about avoiding advertisements, even unintended product placement (in soaps like Eastenders, they come up with fictional beers to sell in the pub and so on). If product placement became the norm, I wonder if they would be forced to stop showing American imports?
That raises a very good point as far as support is concerned. I find it' s much easier to support someone using a command line or terminal app - you just tell them what to type and when to press enter, and they can just read the response.
... and so on.
With a browser app, you're constantly having to describe the screen:
"OK, now do you see a little button that looks like a magnifying glass"
"Yes, do I press that?"
"No, press the one next to it that I can't describe because I have no idea what flavour of crack our designers were smoking when they decided to make it the icon for update"
... Redhat buy ads?
Our company policy recently changed from smart casual to business suits. Sorry, but to me a business suit is a uniform. McDonalds servers wear uniforms. School children wear uniforms. Why should I be treated like a child?
I resent the inference that by wearing a piece of cloth tied in a knot around my neck I will somehow be more professional and do a better job; hell, I can post to Slashdot while still wearing a tie - I'm doing it right now.
I can see no logical reason for business dress, and as a geek that lack of logic really pisses me off.
Our new CEO came to our office to introduce himself and actually spent ten minutes lecturing us on the importance of business dress. In one office, we apparently have staff tasked with reporting on colleagues with poor dress standards. I know it's completely screwed, and I should leave, but the pays OK and my actual job is quite interesting, so I put up with the bullshit.
I'd just like to add to this that the government seems hell bent on making driving expensive, but this is not out of any concern for the environment or as a backdoor ban on driving; they want us driving and paying through the nose for it.
Otherwise how do you explain new housing estates being built with no public transport links and no local shops - only a Tesco superstore five or ten miles away? Or how do you explain business parks built with no public transport access?
My company relocated from a town centre office block which was five minutes walk from a train station and had a bus stop right outside. We had been there for years and many employees had relocated to within walking distance. Our new office is on a business park, about 15 miles away, so walking is out of the question. The nearest train station is about a 40 minute walk away. Bus links are non existant. Previously I could walk to work in about half an hour. It now takes me the same to drive, but public transport would take almost three times as long (20 min walk to station, 20 minutes on train, 40 minutes to walk to office). Rather than walk five minutes to a sandwich shop at lunchtime, the nearest supermarket is a five mile round trip.
One other kicker; it costs more to sit on a cattle truck of a train than to sit in the comfort of my car.
The reason for our move? It was much cheaper. Not for the building, but for the taxes. In other words, the company got a massive tax break to relocate to a location that forced the employees to commute by car. Perhaps you could explain to me how the free market was involved in that?
I guess I still deserve everything I get though, for not being willing to take a massive pay cut to stay in the old town or spend tens of thousands to relocate (and incidentally, there is next to no housing near the new business park anyway).